car hire with child seats, advice please

[180176]

just booking car hire for our french holiday, starting from bordeaux. All the providers I've looked at so far don't guarantee child seat availability tho the implication is that it won't be a problem. Also I'm not sure I know whether I need infant or child seats for my 18 month old and 3 year old - and the 2 companies ive called and asked haven't been able to tell me either. Does anyone have a preferred car hire provider they would recommend?? many thanks

[savage]

Hi

We hired a car in france last year, although it was from a smaller airport and they ran out of car seats, for our then baby. They left us high & dry to fend for ourselves i'm afraid. In the end we took a car seat for an older child and drove to a local hypermarket to by an infant seat, which we then billed the hire car company for (hertz). They were very apologetic but couldn't help us.

I guess the reason i'm telling you this is they may say there won't be a problem, but our experience shows that they cannot guarentee that. They did seem to have enough seat for an older child (next stage up from infant), but i suppose it all depends on the demand at the time! My only advice would be to get in the queue at the airport as soon as you can at Bordeaux, to get priority!

I'm sure you will be fine though

[180176]

thanks savage - i cant believe a company as big as hertz didnt have sufficient supply!

[snowboarder]

Hi - no good advice but I am worried about this too for our hols in Spain! Do not understand why they cannot reserve you one - I am going to call the day before to try and make sure but it seems v weird system...

[sanity girl]

I also had problems getting a car seat in Naples - they didn't have the right size when we picked up the car. We ended up buying a cheap one locally - only cost 10 euros more than the price the hire company quoted for hiring one for a week! It might be worth just taking your car seat with you?

[Mellors]

I'm fed up with the gross quality of hire car seats, and the lack of availability (we have always got one in the end, but it normally seems to involve a fight). Also, they cost a fortune. This year I'm driving to Gatwick, getting one of those collection people to take away my car from arrivals, and checking in my own car seats (at no extra cost). Hubby will pick up hire car at other end and drive round for us lot and we will use our own.

[180176]

sounds like a good idea mellors, i had thought of this but was worried about our car seats getting damaged in transit/flung about by cargo handlers? will you be checking them in as they are or with some protection? thanks

[Mellors]

Checking in as they are, they have had pretty heavy kid-wear for years, so think it will be hard to do anything too awful to them.

[echo]

We've never taken our own car seat, but I'll think thats what we'll do on our next holls.

On the first holls to Malta, it was unusable as we were given a 9month-3years seat for our 6 week old new born!! My horrified complaints and subsequent emails had no impact. The second holls to Madeira, was the right size but very tatty and did not really fit properly. We used very main stream car hire places and we booked in advance.

I also agree that the seats are also expensive- in Madeira I think it worked out to be around ?80 for a two week hire period. This is not much less that the price of a good chair seat, so I was very surprised by the very old seat that was brought out.

Although the idea of fitting our car seat to another car, feels a bit stressful- must remember to take instructions!!

[missd]

We have always taken our own car seat. Just put it in a black bin bag, label it up and check it in. It might get thrown about a bit but no more than any suitcase. They are very sturdy so has always been fine.

ALso means you're not paying extra for something you already have and you know you're guaranteed one in the car you're renting

[180176]

right, decision made, we're taking our own. thanks everyone.